The long, frustrating road to recovering my Wii downloads

Nintendo's interface makes the transfer process as annoying as possible.

Last month, when a combination of overly stringent DRM and aging hardware trapped $400+ of my purchased downloadable games on my old Wii, I promised I would give an update on the results of Nintendo's $65 repair program. Well, the repaired system came back this weekend, and I was finally able to transfer most of my saved and purchased content over to the Wii U. Of course, the ordeal wouldn't be complete without a few final hassles for good measure.

First, the bad news: the memory problem afflicting my launch-era Wii meant Nintendo had to replace the main circuit board for the system, including all the save data and personal settings that were contained on the Wii's internal system memory. Most of my important save files were backed up to an SD card, but I did lose the uncopiable save files for games like Super Smash Bros. Brawl and Super Mario Kart Wii. I'll have to play through those games again if I want to re-unlock the characters and courses I had already earned. Such is life. Frankly, I'm more relieved that my 100 percent completion files on games like Super Mario Galaxy and Punch-Out! were safe.

On the plus side, Nintendo also replaced the disc drive and cleaned the exterior of the system, so my six-year-old Wii is now practically factory fresh. The system came back with a new serial number, too, making me wonder why they didn't just give me an entirely new console when it was clear the memory was shot (then again, maybe they did).

Recovering my downloadable games meant diving back into the convoluted transfer tool Nintendo uses to make sure my games are only playable on one system, period. The tool operated much more smoothly and quickly now that it was transferring only one small file, representing the license data for my Wii purchases. The whole back-and-forth procedure took about 10 minutes, much of which was spent watching an entertaining, Pikmin-themed animation play out on-screen.

With the licenses transferred, I inserted my backup SD card into the Wii U and tried playing a game of Bit.Trip.Runner (easily one of my favorite WiiWare games). An error message appeared, telling me I couldn't play the game on the current Wii system. A bit of panic crept into my mind. Wasn't this the whole reason I went through this ridiculous repair and transfer process? I tried copying the game file to the Wii U system memory. No dice—another error. Had the license transfer actually failed yet again?

To check, I logged into the Wii Shop Channel from the Wii U. Thankfully, it recognized my account, complete with the 300 Wii Shop Points ($3) that I had remaining in my balance. I clicked through to the "Games I've downloaded" section and was greeted with a six-page list of my purchased games, all set for free re-download. The copy of Bit.Trip.Runner I re-downloaded to the Wii U worked perfectly on the first try (even recognizing my backed up save file). Still, I had to wonder why I had backed up these games at all, since the backups apparently don't work even when the license files have been transferred.

With my backups non-functional, I was forced to go through the hassle of re-downloading my entire downloadable Wii game library. This meant that I had to manually delete all of those backups from my SD card, since the Wii Shop Channel wouldn't let me directly overwrite the old, defunct versions of my games with the newly downloaded versions. Every time I tried, I just got an error saying "that game already exists on the SD card." Uh, I know it already exists... but you won't let me play it, so... here we are!

Sure, I could have downloaded the games directly to the Wii U's system memory, but of the 32GB of storage space on the Wii U, only 512MB are made available for downloadable Wii games. That space would have quickly filled up. I could have found a new SD card, but I didn't really want to have my downloaded games on one card and my backed-up save files on another. So I went about the tedious task of manual deletion for each file, a three-click process that required waiting a few seconds per game while the memory is cleared out. Doing this took about 15 minutes altogether.

That was nothing compared to the hassle of redownloading my entire digital Wii library, though. There's no button on the Wii Shop Channel to just "Redownload all purchased content." Instead, I had to go through these steps for each game:

Click the "Games I've downloaded" button on the Wii Shop Channel. Wait five to 10 seconds for my list of purchased games to come up.

Click through the six-page list to find the game I want. Each click requires a short page load, so this took ten more seconds or so.

Click "Redownload."

Click "SD card" as the destination for the files.

Click "Okay" on the page telling me which controllers work with the game.

Click "Yes" one more time to confirm the download.

Sit there and wait as the game downloads. This download can't be queued up or performed in the background, and you can't do anything else with the Wii while it's happening. On the plus side, there is a cute animation of Mario collecting coins to represent your download progress.

Going through this process for the 60 or so games I had purchased on my Wii took nearly two hours. That would be OK if it was two hours of automatic downloading, where I could go off and do something else. But the Wii Shop Channel interface forced me to sit there, mindlessly going through the above steps every few minutes as each download completed. It made me thank the stars that the Wii U's new Shop Channel allows for queued background downloads.

So, that's that. Many hours and $65 later, my Wii U can now do practically everything my old Wii could, and significantly more. Despite all the hassle, I am glad that my content wasn't permanently trapped on a failing system. Still, I'm a bit miffed that Nintendo's DRM and interface issues made all this necessary in the first place.

Promoted Comments

I had about 50 games on my wii and the whole thing took me about 6 hours to do. I still have not downloaded them to the wii u; that would take another couple hours. Don't know what Nintendo was thinking other then to make this the most complicated way of doing things. I kind reminds me of the frustrations I had with Microsoft when I used to use them for things.

Save data on the SD card can be used after the transfer (if copied back to the system memory), but GAMES saved on the SD card cannot be used. It doesn't matter that you had your system repaired. Games stored on the SD card are encrypted with a console-specific key so you'll have to download them again on the Wii U regardless.

(I had 11 pages of games to download so it took me about twice as long. :-P)

I feel your pain. I had to do the same thing for the 66 VC games I've got. What an awful update process.

1 post | registered Apr 2, 2007

Kyle Orland
Kyle is the Senior Gaming Editor at Ars Technica, specializing in video game hardware and software. He has journalism and computer science degrees from University of Maryland. He is based in the Washington, DC area. Emailkyle.orland@arstechnica.com//Twitter@KyleOrl

This is the very definition of a first world problem.The question is, why did you re-download all 60 games? Did you intend to play them all that moment?

It shouldn't have been neccessary in the first place. Why the convoluted DRM? Why not a simple authentication against his WII Id to transfer everything?

Nintendo is apparently terribly afraid that someone might buy two of their systems and want to play games on both of them!Don't worry, Nintendo, the Wii is that last piece of hardware I expect to purchase from you.

So, were you only able to transfer over your saved data because you paid for the $65 repair fee? My Wii died and I bought my friend's as a replacement. I have about $20 of purchased games on my bricked Wii, but I don't want to spend $65 recovering them. Is there a free version where I mail in my dead Wii and they transfer over my account information once they get it?

Why are these things even designed like this? I mean, I understand wanting to make sure that people can't pirate the games, but this whole story just sounds completely ass-backwards. Didn't Nintendo consider that they might need to replace or repair these things at some point in the future? The bit about having files trapped on memory tied to the logic board is ridiculous!

Why are these things even designed like this? I mean, I understand wanting to make sure that people can't pirate the games, but this whole story just sounds completely ass-backwards. Didn't Nintendo consider that they might need to replace or repair these things at some point in the future? The bit about having files trapped on memory tied to the logic board is ridiculous!

Because it's Nintendo and they still haven't figured out the whole "online account" thing.

So, were you only able to transfer over your saved data because you paid for the $65 repair fee? My Wii died and I bought my friend's as a replacement. I have about $20 of purchased games on my bricked Wii, but I don't want to spend $65 recovering them. Is there a free version where I mail in my dead Wii and they transfer over my account information once they get it?

Yonder, No, there is no free "lunch" with these transfers. The only way to do a transfer is either by sending your Wii in for repair, at which point purchases will be transferred to the new unit for you OR by contacting Nintendo and submitting a valid police report indicating that the Wii in question was stolen. If your Wii is in fact bricked (won't boot and/or memory operations cause catastrophic failures as happened to Kyle during the transfer to his new Wii U), then these are your only two normal avenue of recourse. If your Wii has a failed media drive, you can still do a transfer to a Wii U since the transfer only relies on a working SD card and main Wii unit. However, Nintendo provides no service to transfer purchased content to another Wii except as noted above.

Note that there are occasional reports of people that were able to get Nintendo to do transfers between units outside of these circumstances, but these are the exception and not the rule. In general, it doesn't hurt to try but I wouldn't be surprised if the answer is as above.

So, were you only able to transfer over your saved data because you paid for the $65 repair fee? My Wii died and I bought my friend's as a replacement. I have about $20 of purchased games on my bricked Wii, but I don't want to spend $65 recovering them. Is there a free version where I mail in my dead Wii and they transfer over my account information once they get it?

The save data that was on my SD card was perfectly usable even without the repair. The transfer tool would have been able to save the "uncopiable" Mario Kart and Smahs Bros data, had the repair not necessitated wiping them =(

This is the very definition of a first world problem.The question is, why did you re-download all 60 games? Did you intend to play them all that moment?

A long long time ago, when the world was young and Windows 98 frolicked in the meadows, I used to do the same thing whenever I rebuilt my computer (or 98 got in such a bad state that I needed to reinstall). Eventually I changed this behavior and now after a rebuild (or an OS upgrade) I only reinstall the programs I need at that time. Often a program that I depended on years ago for something is totally unnecessary today, or some other program now fills that role.

To some, apparently (from the downvotes) KellenDunk's comment may seem a bit callous, but I do think it a valid question.

Now the story's author did, I think, have a valid reason for doing this, to appraise his loyal fans of the situation at hand, so I don't see any reason to be hard on him.

While my kids have been using their Wii for, what, 4 years or so, we have no downloaded content as I saw no reason to put it on the internet. I still don't. But should it come to pass that we need to replace the Wii (the sensor bar was the first casualty), then I think part of the article will still be applicable. I would be happy to transfer character experience and game status and saved games if it's possible.

Why are these things even designed like this? I mean, I understand wanting to make sure that people can't pirate the games, but this whole story just sounds completely ass-backwards. Didn't Nintendo consider that they might need to replace or repair these things at some point in the future? The bit about having files trapped on memory tied to the logic board is ridiculous!

Not only is it ridiculous, it's also a trivial task to pirate their games.

I had about 50 games on my wii and the whole thing took me about 6 hours to do. I still have not downloaded them to the wii u; that would take another couple hours. Don't know what Nintendo was thinking other then to make this the most complicated way of doing things. I kind reminds me of the frustrations I had with Microsoft when I used to use them for things.

They absolutely gave you a new system. They didn't clean the case or freshen it up, they just salvaged your data and uploaded it to a refurbed unit that was ready to go. Your box will be sent to China and repaired if possible or just scrapped. I know this because I RMAd XBOX 360 that had problems connecting to wireless controllers. I tracked the box to the factory and was amazed that my "repaired" unit was returned to me in less than 24 hours. Then I realized that the reason it was gleaming when I took it out of the box was it was a refurb with a new case. It worked well and I didn't know the difference. But hey it looks new and works like new, ergo it must be new right?

Save data on the SD card can be used after the transfer (if copied back to the system memory), but GAMES saved on the SD card cannot be used. It doesn't matter that you had your system repaired. Games stored on the SD card are encrypted with a console-specific key so you'll have to download them again on the Wii U regardless.

(I had 11 pages of games to download so it took me about twice as long. :-P)

Say what you want to say about Microsoft but DLC for the 360 is pretty simple: download files to storage device, content will work on an activated console or a console with the gamertag of the DLC's owner logged in.

Nintendo still has a ways to go but at IIRC the wii didn't even have DLC or patching at launch.

Because it's Nintendo and they still haven't figured out the whole "online account" thing.

Perhaps I've missed them but I don't recall articles (@Ars) about Blizzard and Ubisoft and their DRM/always online crap.If it was about X year old EVE characters getting reset then perhaps I'd might feel different.

Two issues:1: you constantly need to keep local copies of everything because you never know when a company will make it their prerogative to remove that content from the cloud. Apple did this with all of the software for click-wheel iPods. It is a common occurrence.

2: to curb piracy, being legitimate has to be easier. If it is a long or difficult process following the route Nintendo prescribes, but a quick an easy route for piracy, what is the incentive? Apple figured this out with iTunes. Steve Jobs said that the way to curb piracy is not to fight it but to compete with it.

Sony cancelled my PSN account because my CC was stolen and all charges for the lest 48 hours had been charged back. It just so happens that PS+ was one of those charges. Now I am supposed to send a physical money order to Sony and hope I get a timely response...or I can just hack my PS3 and PSP and be done with the hassle.

I don't care to spend my leisure time dealing with some company's flaws.

Because it's Nintendo and they still haven't figured out the whole "online account" thing.

Perhaps I've missed them but I don't recall articles (@Ars) about Blizzard and Ubisoft and their DRM/always online crap.If it was about X year old EVE characters getting reset then perhaps I'd might feel different.

Haven't seen much covered in the way of blizzard's DRM here though. I really just don't understand how DRM is increasing sales much. The pirate community has always found was around even the most sophisticated DRM. The bipass techniques are often used by people who legitimately purchased the games in order to avoid the hassle of dealing with obtuse DRM. My point is the same that has been made many times before - making games more accessible (via steam, amazon downloads, etc) fights piracy far more effectively than restricting legitimate purchases with DRM while pirates have a field day with their free software.

I feel like the current trend is towards less DRM and more easily accessible content. Some companies are just catching up. I wasn't planning on buying a Wii U but after this fiasco, it is definitely off my list of potential purchases. I cannot believe a company built around gaming would not do everything within its power to save every last bite of a player's saved information. Be it through the recovery/restoration process or built in safety mechanisms in the software. They clearly have no idea how to operate in the modern gaming ecosystem.

I wonder how the DRM would affect households with two consoles. I don't know the demographics of system sales, but is someone who has one unit hooked up to their main TV and one to a bedroom TV basically SOL when it comes to playing the game game on both systems?

A more common use case - moving the wii into a kid's bedroom or something. In that case you're basically forcing the user to choose a single system they can play the game on no? Seems pretty crappy.

I've been seeing quite a lot of stores around here with wii u units in stock. Was expecting they'd be sold out throuhg xmas at least

Sitting here looking at a Wii that bricked earlier this year that has about a dozen downloaded titles and realizing that Friend Codes wasn't the only online stupidity that poured from this company. Adios Nintendo.

The Wii itself contains a hardwired encryption key, and your Wii account also has a key associated with it. When you download an item from the Wii store, it's encrypted on the fly, using both of these keys to lock the file.

So When you transferred your licenses to the new Wii, the master key actually changed, due to the fact that you have a different system with a different serial number. So the files needed to be re-encrypted, which really just involved re-downloading them from Nintendo.

Now the interesting thing is that your "repaired" Wii is really a new Wii. My guess is that the "repair" actually involved a Nintendo tech basically doing the same thing you just did... so even reloading from the SD card on to the repaired system would have resulted in the same failure.

It's good to know that Nintendo allows re-downloads, though. That saves a lot of effort, in terms of backing things up to SD, in order to back up downloaded games.

Not that I support piracy or anything like that, I'm a software developer myself. But when it's significantly easier for a pirate to do these things, there's something wrong with their way of doing things. Makes you wonder why they make their users go through all of this hassle when the Wii U is going to get cracked open just like the Wii before it. Worst part of all of this is that, once they break one of their new systems, all of them will fall (3ds, dsi and wii u).

Anyway. I'm not buying a Wii U until they make it way more user friendly to do these kinds of things. Giving them my money now is simply backing this kind of DRM.

Sure, I could have downloaded the games directly to the Wii U's system memory, but of the 32GB of storage space on the Wii U, only 512MB are made available for downloadable Wii games.

Side-note: actually, none of the 32GB of storage space on the Wii U is made available for downloadable Wii games or Wii save files. There is a separate 512MB NAND chip on the Wii U board that hosts all of the Wii mode data. I presume this was done so that Wii software is unable to 'break out' of its sandbox and do anything to the Wii U's software.

The most disappointing part of the Wii U's "Wii integration" is that there is a precedent for doing it better, and from Nintendo, to boot: The 3DS.

The 3DS can access the DSi's e-shop, buy games from it, download them, and they appear right in the main menu alongside all other 3DS e-shop purchases. Data could be transferred from a DSi to a 3DS (though a similarly convoluted scheme) and a user's data would be all right there, at the forefront. A DS game plays in a 3DS without a 1.5 minute reboot. Hell, a Gamecube game boots straight out of the Wii's main menu (if your Wii still has GCN support...) DSi games aren't dependent on some tiny storage size only supported by the DSi when run on a 3DS... they're just another piece of software.

While I'm sure there are emulation reasons and piracy concerns to separate software between the two systems so thoroughly, it does a disservice to the consumers and frustrates those that have already seen Nintendo do better than this. Although Wii software might not look as good alongside Wii U software, having it all on the main menu, all tied to the same backend account, only benefits every user. I find it impossible to believe that no Nintendo engineer thought of this. The only counter-argument I can come up with is that it'd be far too convenient and useful and too nice a user experience for everything to be integrated in such a manner.

Given that that the Wii and WiiU are primarily aimed at children, I think you should look on this as a valuable educational experience in which kids get to encounter first-hand the sort of frustrating, badly-designed software they'll end up having to use at work. Rather than screaming at the machine and banging their heads off the wall, they'll find it a comfortable and familiar environment, just like their old Wii.

I had a similar experience with my transfer. No matter what I did, when it came time to transfer everything to the Wii U, the process continuously failed partway through. My Wii Shop purchases were stuck in the ether, pending a call to Nintendo.

Considering that the Virtual Console games I had were mostly bought simply for convenience's sake, being that for the vast majority I still own the cartridges and systems in working order, I didn't really care to send anything in to Nintendo. Besides, I did have NSMBU and a backlog of Wii games (The Last Story!) to get through.

Can't easily access games you paid for and your game data? Solution: don't buy Nintendo anymore, until they get their head out of their behind. There's no reason to pay to be abused!! Companies treating paying customers like crap need to be boycotted!! There's no defense for this kind of treatment, NONE!!

I tried copying some save files via SD card as a test, I had to run the game once however before I could copy the save file. Although in what seems to be typical Nintendo fashion, I first had to delete the save file created on my Wii U before I could copy the file from the SD card.

In the end I decided transferring all my games and saves wasn't worth it, the primary factor being that the Wii U won't output anything other than PAL50.

Wii U can be for Wii U, Wii can be for Wii and GameCube.

Now if only they let me output video over HDMI and audio out of the component plugs simultaneously, as I have a projector that doesn't do audio. I'm stuck using component video if I want audio.

Why are these things even designed like this? I mean, I understand wanting to make sure that people can't pirate the games, but this whole story just sounds completely ass-backwards. Didn't Nintendo consider that they might need to replace or repair these things at some point in the future? The bit about having files trapped on memory tied to the logic board is ridiculous!

Actually, Nintendo has always expected you to return the unit to them for service - at which point they'll transfer the license to your new replacement console for free.

It's only recently they encountered the "a family might own more than one Wii" or "someone might actually want to two TWO or MORE Wiis", because quite honestly, prior to this, most people only owned 1 of a console. One Xbox, one PS2, One GameCube. Few owned more.

(And really, it worked well - Nintendo supported fixing the NES until 2005 or so until they just couldn't get the parts anymore and had to stop repairing them.). Basically, the parents are supposed to call that support hotline and Nintendo will take care of everything. And yes, what they did was take his old Wii, run their own transfer tool to the refurbished Wii they sent back, hence the different serial number.

Now, the BIG problem Nintendo has is children privacy laws - they're so strict that really, asking a child for their email address is inviting a lawsuit from the government. Unless you can guarantee that it's a parental e-mail address, you can't ask for any personal information at all (you can probably ask for a name, but even that's iffy). Which means your DRM options are limited because you cannot have any personal information at all. You can't really have an online account system because of it - because the people who are buying aren't allowed to use anything that might be for personal information.

You could try to support networked Wii licenses, but then you run into networking problems and even bigger, the "license server" Wii can reboot often because it's the old style console where the game runs on bare metal with no OS.

About the only possible system might be where every Wii comes with a USB dongle that plugs into the back and must be present. If you want to transfer licenses, you initiate the transfer tool, move the dongle to the new wii, and the transfer is initiated and cleared from the old Wii (perhaps by resetting the dongle so the old licenses are no longer valid). Won't fix save games, but is anonymous as you can get. And perhaps Nintendo can make a multi-dongle host accessory to do network licensing. This would be the anonymous way of doing what Xbox360 license transfers do as well ...

Why are these things even designed like this? I mean, I understand wanting to make sure that people can't pirate the games, but this whole story just sounds completely ass-backwards. Didn't Nintendo consider that they might need to replace or repair these things at some point in the future? The bit about having files trapped on memory tied to the logic board is ridiculous!

Now, the BIG problem Nintendo has is children privacy laws - they're so strict that really, asking a child for their email address is inviting a lawsuit from the government. Unless you can guarantee that it's a parental e-mail address, you can't ask for any personal information at all (you can probably ask for a name, but even that's iffy). Which means your DRM options are limited because you cannot have any personal information at all. You can't really have an online account system because of it - because the people who are buying aren't allowed to use anything that might be for personal information.

You could try to support networked Wii licenses, but then you run into networking problems and even bigger, the "license server" Wii can reboot often because it's the old style console where the game runs on bare metal with no OS.

About the only possible system might be where every Wii comes with a USB dongle that plugs into the back and must be present. If you want to transfer licenses, you initiate the transfer tool, move the dongle to the new wii, and the transfer is initiated and cleared from the old Wii (perhaps by resetting the dongle so the old licenses are no longer valid). Won't fix save games, but is anonymous as you can get. And perhaps Nintendo can make a multi-dongle host accessory to do network licensing. This would be the anonymous way of doing what Xbox360 license transfers do as well ...

I'm not buying any excuse for why their DRM sucks when Microsoft, Sony and Valve (steam) have managed to overcome theses issues and make DRM much less painful if not invisible.